Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1,500 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
Child trafficking has been noted to have a ‘lower profile’ than that of adult trafficking. However, numbers of recorded child victims are more than a third of the total of those identified in the UK by relevant authorities. Trafficked children have ‘particular vulnerabilities’, as recognised by the European Union (EU) Anti-Trafficking Directive. This chapter explores those specific needs and examines the UK’s response to children who have been exploited. It looks at whether the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) works effectively for children and assesses how current policy/practice impacts on this affected group. Ultimately, child trafficking presents a major challenge for those working in the UK to understand, recognise, prevent and respond to. Approaches are often focused on children who have already been exploited and there is far less work done to prevent the exploitation in the first place.
In 2015, three new Acts had passed into law: the Modern Slavery Act (MSA), the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act, and the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act. The three Acts are comprehensive in scope and include: a raft of new criminal offences; measures aimed at preventing modern slavery; support provisions for child and adult victims; and in the MSA, the role of an Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and a ‘Transparency in Supply Chains’ provision, aimed at improving businesses’ response to slavery and exploitation. This chapter considers the key, comparable provisions across the three Acts — assessing if and how they differ from each other and from standards in international law. It also details the extent of their implementation and impact to date.
This chapter first charts the short history from the early anti-trafficking strategy put in place by the Labour government in 2007 through the changes and reorganisations of the subsequent 10 years, including the launch of the modern slavery strategy in 2015 under then Home Secretary May. While focusing on the impacts felt by workers in the UK, it also takes into account the position adopted by the UK in relation to international frameworks. The second section then focuses on the importance and potential impact of the creation of the most recent governance and enforcement structures — for example, the Director of Labour Market Enforcement and the evolution of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA). As of May 2017, the GLA was rebranded as the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and has new powers to investigate serious exploitation across the whole UK labour market. The third section asks how we can best assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the modern slavery agenda.
This introductory chapter notes the recent heightened profile of the term ‘modern slavery’ in the UK. Various phenomena, practices, and policies have been bundled together under this term, which requires careful analytical and critical attention. It is argued that it is vitally important to understand how the discourse of modern slavery has recently emerged — and the histories that continue to shape present-day discourses — as the terms of engagement shape what are considered appropriate and adequate policy responses. The main goal of the rest of the book is to develop a robust critique of the development of law, policy and practice relating to modern slavery in the UK, in particular, for the benefit of those engaged in some way in anti-slavery work.
This chapter discuss how campaigning and amendments to the Modern Slavery Act, together with a government-commissioned review, resulted in workers being able to change employers within the six-month duration of their visa. In addition, those formally confirmed as trafficked are now permitted to apply for a two-year-long visa to work as a domestic worker in a private home without recourse to public funds. However, these measures fall short of the rights contained within the original visa, which not only worked to support domestic workers to escape abuse, but also went a long way towards preventing exploitative work and provided a pathway for those who had left exploitative work to move on with their lives. The chapter argues that the UK needs to move beyond the ‘rescue and release’ law enforcement-based approach that it has taken to date.
This chapter considers the position of migrants in the UK who experience severe labour exploitation. It addresses how — or whether — the emerging ‘modern slavery complex’ can adequately respond to the production and continuation of unfree labour relationships that produce conditions now grouped under the umbrella of ‘modern slavery’. It starts from the point of understanding severe labour exploitation as emerging within a set of multidimensional processes embedded in the operation of labour markets and economies. This includes employer relationships with employees, migrants’ work and migration trajectories, and socio-economic and family status. For migrant workers, the backdrop of hostile immigration policies and politics is an important framer.
Modern slavery, in the form of labour exploitation, domestic servitude, sexual trafficking, child labour and cannabis farming, is still growing in the UK and industrialised countries, despite the introduction of laws to try to stem it.
This hugely topical book, by a team of high-profile activists and expert writers, is the first to critically assess the legislation, using evidence from across the field, and to offer strategies for improvement in policy and practice. It argues that, contrary to its claims to be ‘world-leading’, the Modern Slavery Act is inconsistent, inadequate and punitive; and that the UK government, through its labour market and immigration policies, is actually creating the conditions for slavery to be promoted.
This chapter explores how business is implicated by modern slavery, and the salient requirements of the UK Modern Slavery Act (MSA) transparency in supply chain provision, in the context of growing mandatory reporting requirements for business to report transparently on their supply chain impacts. It also examines how business has responded to the MSA. It concludes with some practical steps that business can take to address the risk of modern slavery in its supply chains. Among these are ensuring that top management is supportive of tackling modern slavery in the organisation and supply chains; understanding how these obligations fit within any wider mandatory or voluntary reporting undertaken by the business; putting policies in place; establishing robust due-diligence processes; mapping the supply and value chain of the business.
This chapter begins by setting out the root causes of slavery, and demonstrating the fundamental role of the failure of the rule of law in enabling slavery to persist. It then sets out how particular failures in the rule of law give rise to four ‘peacetime’ political economies of slavery (i.e. state-sponsored slavery, state-tolerated slavery, state-facilitated slavery, state-muddled slavery). Where international mechanisms exist to uphold human rights standards, these political economies may be reformed somewhat. However, in addition, what is needed is a more fundamental reform of the nature of all political economies to establish processes to empower vulnerable individuals and groups and to uphold human rights standards. The chapter then sets out what forms these reforms must take to establish political economies with the potential to reduce slavery, if not eliminate it completely.
This chapter examines the existing knowledge about human trafficking for cannabis cultivation in the UK, with a specific focus on how Vietnamese nationals are most commonly being exploited for this purpose. It then moves on to its main focus: the criminalisation of those potentially trafficked for cannabis cultivation. Trafficked persons who are exploited for the cultivation of cannabis in the UK are committing criminal offences under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. However, if people trafficked to grow cannabis are recognised as having been abused and exploited, and as victims of crime or human rights violations as a result of coercion and abuse, then punishing them should be seen as highly inappropriate. The criminalisation of trafficked persons is also counterproductive for efforts to prevent trafficking and prosecute traffickers.
